[Hidden-tech] Joining Google AdWords & Analytics

[Marcia Yudkin]

> AdWords are beneficial if you are running a targeted campaign with
> specialized landing pages that allow you to test/track the
> effectiveness of different ads and conversion rates, but you can get
> a better overall long-term return on your investment from effective
> search engine and content optimization.
>
I don't think it's an either-or.  I have some pages to which I get great
unpaid traffic from Google and yet when I see some spaces coming up in my
client schedule, I supplement that with a pay per click ad that I then turn
off again when my schedule is full.

Note that I am not trying to get as many clicks as possible.  My goal is to
get as many people as possible who are the right people for my program to
click through to my page.  Normally I don't need to spend more than $50
before turning the ad off again.

Interestingly, I learned a valuable lesson for organic SEO from my pay per
click campaign.  There was one keyword phrase that cost more than all the
others I bid on, and even when I bid relatively high on it, my ad still
wasn't coming up that often.  That told me that this must be a relatively
profitable keyword phrase for the other advertisers.  So I took that phrase
and put it first in the page title of my landing page, and lo and behold, my
page now comes up #3 or #4 on the first page of Google results without me
having to pay for the clicks.

Oh, and by the way, I have some sample before and after Google Adwords ads
on my web site that show some effective techniques for writing these little
haiku-like ads:
http://www.yudkin.com/sample10b.htm

Marcia Yudkin
Copywriter and Marketing Consultant
Goshen